March 25 - 29, 2007
Ensemble in residence at the University of North Texas
Denton, TX

December 9, 2006
"Novenas in Wind"
Presented as part of the European Sacred Music Concert Series
DeBoest Lecture Hall, Indianapolis Museum of Art

September 10, 2006
Music from 16th century Guatemala
St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
Albuquerque, NM

18 September 2005
Music from 16th century Guatemala
St. Francis Episcopal Church
Zionsville, IN

June 18, 2005
Music from 16th century Guatemala
Boston Early Music Festival BEMF fringe event
Church of the Covenant
Boston, MA

Reviews of Ensemble Lipzodes

December 2012
Review of Lipzodes in Di&aacutelogos (Spanish)

The entire magazine is available here. Our review is on page 38.
September 2012
Review of our CD in Fanfare
Magazine by Henry Lebedinsky

The musicians of Ensemble Lipzodes, performing on shawms, recorders, and
dulcians, met while students at Indiana University and work with many of the
world's most prestigious historical performance ensembles. Together, they
blend serious musicianship with a sense of fun that comes through very clearly
on this recording, playing a selection of dance pieces and embellished
instrumental versions of sacred polyphonic vocal pieces. Their phrasing is
lovely, paying attention to the syntax and rhetoric of each line with a good
singer's skill.

You can read the entire review here.
2010
Review of our CD by Johan van Veen

This disc...[is] an important addition to the growing catalogue of
recordings with Latin American repertoire. It could also serve to correct, as
it were, the picture of music from that continent. Not everything is
extraverted, and not all music from that region needs to be performed with a
lot of noise. Lovers of Latin-American music shouldn't miss this disc, but
others - for instance those who are interested in early liturgical music -
will also enjoy this recording.

This disc contains music which almost certainly has been recorded never before. That makes it an important addition to the
growing catalogue of recordings with Latin American repertoire. It could also serve to correct, as it were, the picture of
music from that continent. Not everything is extraverted, and not all music from that region needs to be performed with a lot
of noise. Lovers of Latin-American music shouldn't miss this disc, but others - for instance those who are interested in
early liturgical music - will also enjoy this recording.
...The general level of singing and playing by the choir and the ensemble is excellent.
February 14, 2010
Ensemble Lipzodes makes Guatemalan music timeless
By David Lewellen, Special to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Ensemble Lipzodes proved Saturday night that the sources of thought-provoking, breathtaking music must be inexhaustible. The
Indiana-based group, appearing under the auspices of Early Music Now, presented a program of music written in Guatemala in
the 1500s. The Spanish took their music to their colonies, where the indigenous people adopted it, too. According to program
notes, a portion of the anonymous music, from manuscripts now housed at Indiana University, was probably written by Native
Americans. The performance at All Saints Cathedral showed that music written in the New World during the early days of
colonization sounds similar to what the Old World was producing at the same time, which may be the most remarkable thing of
all. Music written for isolated churches in remote mountains in Guatemala has every bit as much passion, energy, and magic as
anything the great musical centers of Europe were hearing. How much more is lying undiscovered in some attic anywhere in the
world? It's a humbling thought. The six musicians - Juan Carlos Arango and Christa Patton (mostly shawms), Anna Marsh and
Kelsey Schilling (mostly dulcians), Yonit Kosovske (organ) and Wolodymyr Smishkewych (singer and percussion) - performed with
remarkable ensemble and technique. The performers stood in a semicircle and signaled to one another to let tempos sway and
bounce. A few moments of ragged intonation (probably inevitable on the relatively primitive instruments) made the group's
typically rock-solid sound all the more notable. The music spanned many styles, from unadorned chant to complex counterpoint
among four independent lines. Ensemble Lipzodes invested nearly all of it with an intensity of feeling that was at once grave
and exuberant, typical of the best music produced during the Renaissance. Dances whirled; religious texts soared;
instrumental lines wound around each other. Only a few repetitive chants written in a narrow range seemed less than
completely inspired. The only distinctively New World feature of the program might have been the song performed in the
indigenous language of Nahuatl. Smishkewych coached the near-capacity audience to sing the response to his calls, to general
enjoyment.
-- Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
February 13, 2010
Review: Early Music Now Presents Ensemble Lipzodes
by Tom Strini, Third Coast Digest

The Spanish came to Guatemala, converted the locals, and were pleased to find a particular talent for music among them. That
was news to me, and I was pleased to learn it Sunday afternoon, as Early Music Now presented Ensemble Lipzodes at All Saints.
Cathedral. Everyone in the sextet studied at Indiana University. IU is the repository of the rare Guatemalan manuscripts from
which they draw their repertoire. The group draws its name from an enigmatic scrawl on the front of one of those manuscripts.
The music is almost all sacred and very much in the style of the European Renaissance. I kept waiting for some inflections of
Indian music to sneak in, in a scale or the introduction of native instruments. Didn.t happen. If it did back in the day, it
wasn.t written down for posterity. Most texts were in Latin and a few were in Spanish, but the manuscripts also show that the
choirs occasionally translated the texts into one of the three indigenous languages. Tenor and multi-instrumentalist
Wolodymyr Smishkewych handled the solo chants and served as the band.s front man. An ensemble variously comprising recorders,
shawms, dulcian, sackbuts, chamber organ and harp handled the part-songs, a very common practice back in the day. Many of the
27 brief numbers had that Spanish 6/8-3/4 metric flair. Smishkewych has a fine, clear tenor and did well to sustain interest
in the longer liturgical chants. He is also a charming presence and has a winning way with informative banter. He got the big
crowd to sing along lustily with a phrase in native Nahuatl. Some of the polyphonic music was a little tricky to play, but
nothing on the program was virtuosic. This was music that native choirmasters and their native choirs and players would have
sung and played every day as part of the Catholic liturgy. It is lovely. Except for one out-of-tune recorder solo, Ensemble
Lipzodes performed it accurately and simply . even bluntly. Their approach sounded just right.
--Third Coast Digest . Arts& Culture . Music (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
January, 2006
The Ninth Competition in Performance of Music from Spain and Latin America (2006)

The semifinal and final rounds took place Saturday and Sunday, January 28 and 29, in Auer Hall at Indiana University,
Bloomington. The jury was composed of professors Juan Orrego-Salas, Arnaldo Cohen, Otis Murphy, Luiz Fernando Lopes and
Carmen Helena Téllez; with guest judge professor Paul Borg from Illinois State University.
In the Early Music Category the Grand Prize and Performance Practice Prize were won ex aequo by Ensemble Lipzodes and
Ensemble L'Aura. Both ensembles were sponsored by professor Michael McCraw.
The winners will receive cash awards, and will record a collective CD with their competition repertoire in the upcoming year.
October 5, 2004
Early Music Enchantment
by Peter Jacobi, Herald Times music critic

The musicians seemed to be ready for their test, managing like conjurers to take a listener back to that other time in
another place and making him feel both the reverence and the joy that this music most likely expressed for worshippers who
first heard it, native worshippers who were being wooed to Christianity. The lively instrumental introductions and bridges
balanced the more serious chanting quality of sung praises and must have made vespers and the mass more comfortable and
acceptable experiences for the newcomers in attendance. ..... There was enchantment to their music making, and one sensed
also that what one heard was as honest a representation of this music as could be hoped for, considering the sparseness of
notation and guidance that such old manuscripts offer. What resulted turned into a most moving experience."
--Herald-Times (Bloomington, Indiana)